Lest you think that these toddlers were well up for punching their friends in the face, one child (now an old man) who participated says that he remembers half the boys saying they didn't want to fight, only to be told by their war-weary fathers to "shut up and be a man." See, that is the problem with this generation of two-year-olds: They aren't expected to be manly enough. While organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics want to coddle our special snowflakes and say that they "vigorously oppose" boxing as a sport for children because of the risk of "chronic" or "fatal" injuries, it wasn't that bad. A press photo from the time assures us that there was "little in the way of bloodshed."

In 1927, he was doing his thing at the Stag Lane Aerodrome in North London when someone noticed he was jumping closer and closer to a high-tension cable. Despite hearing the warning that the wire was live, Dobbs shouted back that he would risk it and proceeded to try to jump over the cable. He is recorded as "nearly" clearing it, but "nearly" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. His feet got tangled in the wire, and when he reached down to try to free himself, he grabbed it and was electrocuted, throwing him down to the ground (so hey, it got him untangled!) and killing him on the spot.

And that, boys and girls, is why Mom and Dad don't hop/float to work to this day.

Creative with the technique, anyway, if not the name. Because when you hear "fox tossing," you probably get a good idea what this is going to entail. Basically, you have an arena of some sort so that the fox can't escape. Then you line up in pairs, as if you are going to swing a jump rope between you, but instead it's a cloth that you will use for the tossing. The foxes are let out of their cages and run around terrified out of their little minds. When they step on your cloth, you and your partner pull it tight, trying to fling the fox as high in the air as possible. The higher the better, since part of the "fun" was to watch the acrobatics it did in midair in order to try to land on its paws. But it would be wasteful for a fox to land and bash its head open on a solid floor, therefore ruining your chance of getting in more tosses, so the ground was often covered in sawdust. Still, it didn't prevent all injuries, especially since the animals were often tossed as high as 24 feet, and after the fun was over, the players would finish off any injured ones with a good clubbing.

via Wiki Commons They couldn't spare a single flying fox.

If you got bored with foxes, people also used rabbits, badgers, and "wildcats." These events were often a veritable slaughter, with hundreds of animals dead by the end. Still, sometimes the poor animals got their own back. Foxes and "wildcats" have claws, after all, and it was accepted that to play this game meant risking getting bitten or slashed. But the occupational hazards didn't stop its popularity, and even Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I would play at least once a year.

Goose pulling, like fox tossing, is exactly what it sounds like (OK no, not that, sicko). First you get a rope or bar and place it across a road. Take a LIVE goose (or if you want to mix it up, a rabbit) and shave its neck. Then you cover its shaved neck and head in grease. Take your greased-up goose and hang it from the rope or bar by its feet, so its poor little body is flapping in the breeze in sheer terror. Then, anyone who wants to play gets on their horse, and they take turns charging down the road and trying to rip the head off the live goose. These are your ancestors. These sick fucks.

Frederic Remington "More fun than choking my chicken!"

Anyone who missed the goose entirely would get doused in cold water, which doesn't really seem fair, considering what the bird is going through. It must have been a pretty hard game, since it often lasted for hours before someone finally killed the thing. The winner would get the goose, or sometimes a small cash prize, or just drinks at the pub afterwards. You put the poor, terrified bird through that for not a lot of reward. Oh, and this event traditionally took place on Shrove Tuesday, also known as the day before Lent starts, also known as the traditional day people get all the fun stuff out of their systems. So this is what people in the past really wanted to do before their 40 days of religious sobriety: rip a bird's head clean off with their bare hands.

Oh wait, did we say up there this died out in the 1800s? Yeah, about that. If you happen to be in parts of Germany, Belgium, or the Netherlands on Shrove Tuesday, to this day you might see people yanking the heads off geese in this manner. Thankfully, somewhere along the line, animal rights activists must have gotten involved, because at least now the goose is dead before they string it up.

CA_Rotwang/Wiki Commons "In New Orleans, they're flashing boobs, but this is how we get off in Hamburg."

It was totally common for kids to attend the many, many beheadings that were taking place during the terror, and when they got home, they wanted their own version to play with. Two-foot-tall working models became all the rage, with children using them to chop the heads off dolls or even small animals. And the same way people today worry that violent video games are ruining our youths, eventually these tiny guillotines were banned out of fear they were a bad influence on children.

via 50watts.com "We don't want every kid to turn into Sid."

That didn't stop their parents having fun with the fad, though. They had smaller models made that they would use during dinner to chop up bread and vegetables. Sometimes they would have small figures of politicians or other celebrities made and filled with a red perfume that would spurt everywhere when they were beheaded. Ladies would then dip their handkerchiefs in the perfume so they left the dinner smelling nice. The apparently bloodstained handkerchiefs would go well with their other accessory, guillotine earrings.

After all the killings stopped and the aristocracy came back into power, they wanted to show how proud they were of their relatives who had died. So both women and men started wearing their hair short in the back, as if it had been sliced off by the guillotine. Women wore red scarves to represent the blood and those worn by two famous women who had been executed. And at a ball held every year for people who could prove they were related to a victim of the guillotine, dancers would bow to each other in a jerking motion, as if their head had been lopped off. That would be like if everyone went to prom and the cool thing to do was lay on the ground and pretend you were getting a lethal injection.

Kathy wrote a very funny book called FUNERALS TO DIE FOR, and you can buy it here. Or follow her on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, or Twitter.

PS It's not like you can't still get a little guillotine for your desk.

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